This book advances a novel way to resolve the central philosophical problem about the mind: how it is that consciousness or experience fits into a larger naturalistic picture of the world. The ...
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This book advances a novel way to resolve the central philosophical problem about the mind: how it is that consciousness or experience fits into a larger naturalistic picture of the world. The correct response to the problem, it is argued, is not to posit a realm of experience distinct from the physical, nor to deny the reality of phenomenal experience, nor even to rethink our understanding of consciousness and the language we use to talk about it. Instead, we should view the problem itself as having its origin in our ignorance of the relevant physical facts. This change of orientation is shown to be well motivated historically, empirically, and philosophically, and to have none of the side effects it is sometimes thought to have. The result is a philosophical perspective on the mind that has a number of far-reaching consequences: for consciousness studies, for our place in nature, and for the way we think about the relationship between philosophy and science.Less

Ignorance and Imagination : The Epistemic Origin of the Problem of Consciousness

Daniel Stoljar

Published in print: 2006-07-01

This book advances a novel way to resolve the central philosophical problem about the mind: how it is that consciousness or experience fits into a larger naturalistic picture of the world. The correct response to the problem, it is argued, is not to posit a realm of experience distinct from the physical, nor to deny the reality of phenomenal experience, nor even to rethink our understanding of consciousness and the language we use to talk about it. Instead, we should view the problem itself as having its origin in our ignorance of the relevant physical facts. This change of orientation is shown to be well motivated historically, empirically, and philosophically, and to have none of the side effects it is sometimes thought to have. The result is a philosophical perspective on the mind that has a number of far-reaching consequences: for consciousness studies, for our place in nature, and for the way we think about the relationship between philosophy and science.

Contemporary debates in philosophy of mind‐between reductionists, dualists, nonreductive materialists, and eliminativists‐have been based upon the perception that mental phenomena like consciousness ...
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Contemporary debates in philosophy of mind‐between reductionists, dualists, nonreductive materialists, and eliminativists‐have been based upon the perception that mental phenomena like consciousness and intentionality are uniquely irreducible. The “explanatory gap” between mind and body seems to be an urgent and fascinating problem if one assumes that intertheoretic reductions are the rule in the special sciences, with the mind as the lone exception. While this debate was going on in philosophy of mind, however, philosophers of science were rejecting this very sort of reductionism: intertheoretic reductions are not ubiquitous but rare. This book argues that post‐reductionist philosophy of science poses problems for all the familiar positions in philosophy of mind and calls for a deep rethinking of the problematic. To this end, a new perspective, Cognitive Pluralism, is urged.Less

Steven Horst

Published in print: 2007-10-01

Contemporary debates in philosophy of mind‐between reductionists, dualists, nonreductive materialists, and eliminativists‐have been based upon the perception that mental phenomena like consciousness and intentionality are uniquely irreducible. The “explanatory gap” between mind and body seems to be an urgent and fascinating problem if one assumes that intertheoretic reductions are the rule in the special sciences, with the mind as the lone exception. While this debate was going on in philosophy of mind, however, philosophers of science were rejecting this very sort of reductionism: intertheoretic reductions are not ubiquitous but rare. This book argues that post‐reductionist philosophy of science poses problems for all the familiar positions in philosophy of mind and calls for a deep rethinking of the problematic. To this end, a new perspective, Cognitive Pluralism, is urged.

This book reconstructs Friedrich Schleiermacher's understanding of religion and sets this reconstruction into the intellectual and political context of Schleiermacher's work. It is common in the ...
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This book reconstructs Friedrich Schleiermacher's understanding of religion and sets this reconstruction into the intellectual and political context of Schleiermacher's work. It is common in the English literature to see Schleiermacher described as a theorist of “religious experience” or as a hermeneutician of religion, but these views fundamentally misrepresent both the central concerns and the contents of his writings. The reconstruction focuses on Schleiermacher's account of religion as a historically and culturally embedded phenomenon that extends from a core or “essence” within human subjectivity into the realm of interpersonal relations, practices, and material productions. The book calls particular attention to Schleiermacher's lectures in ethics at Halle and Berlin, wherein he developed an understanding of religion as a process of the social formation of feeling. Schleiermacher should be regarded as a thinker who attempted to ground not only academic theology but also the collective self‐understanding of religious persons on an understanding of religion as a natural phenomenon unfolding within history and subject to investigation by the entire range of the natural and human sciences.Less

Schleiermacher on Religion and the Natural Order

Andrew C. Dole

Published in print: 2009-11-05

This book reconstructs Friedrich Schleiermacher's understanding of religion and sets this reconstruction into the intellectual and political context of Schleiermacher's work. It is common in the English literature to see Schleiermacher described as a theorist of “religious experience” or as a hermeneutician of religion, but these views fundamentally misrepresent both the central concerns and the contents of his writings. The reconstruction focuses on Schleiermacher's account of religion as a historically and culturally embedded phenomenon that extends from a core or “essence” within human subjectivity into the realm of interpersonal relations, practices, and material productions. The book calls particular attention to Schleiermacher's lectures in ethics at Halle and Berlin, wherein he developed an understanding of religion as a process of the social formation of feeling. Schleiermacher should be regarded as a thinker who attempted to ground not only academic theology but also the collective self‐understanding of religious persons on an understanding of religion as a natural phenomenon unfolding within history and subject to investigation by the entire range of the natural and human sciences.

So far as language and meaning are concerned, Donald Davidson and Willard Van Orman Quine are typically regarded as birds of a feather. This book urges first of all that they cannot be. Quine’s most ...
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So far as language and meaning are concerned, Donald Davidson and Willard Van Orman Quine are typically regarded as birds of a feather. This book urges first of all that they cannot be. Quine’s most basic and general philosophical commitment is to his methodological naturalism, which is incompatible with Davidson’s main commitments. In particular, it is not possible to endorse, from Quine’s perspective, the roles played by the concepts truth and reference in Davidson’s philosophy of language; Davidson’s employment of the concept of truth is from Quine’s point of view needlessly ambitious; and his use of the concept of reference cannot be divorced from unscientific ‘intuition’. Second, the book puts the case positively in favour of Quine’s naturalism and its corollary, naturalized epistemology. It is possible to give a consistent account of language without problematic uses of the concepts truth and reference, which in turn makes a strident naturalism much more plausible.Less

Quine versus Davidson : Truth, Reference, and Meaning

Gary Kemp

Published in print: 2012-02-09

So far as language and meaning are concerned, Donald Davidson and Willard Van Orman Quine are typically regarded as birds of a feather. This book urges first of all that they cannot be. Quine’s most basic and general philosophical commitment is to his methodological naturalism, which is incompatible with Davidson’s main commitments. In particular, it is not possible to endorse, from Quine’s perspective, the roles played by the concepts truth and reference in Davidson’s philosophy of language; Davidson’s employment of the concept of truth is from Quine’s point of view needlessly ambitious; and his use of the concept of reference cannot be divorced from unscientific ‘intuition’. Second, the book puts the case positively in favour of Quine’s naturalism and its corollary, naturalized epistemology. It is possible to give a consistent account of language without problematic uses of the concepts truth and reference, which in turn makes a strident naturalism much more plausible.

This book brings together chapters addressing the role of images and imagination recruited in the perennial debates surrounding nature, mind, and God. The debate between ‘new atheists’ and religious ...
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This book brings together chapters addressing the role of images and imagination recruited in the perennial debates surrounding nature, mind, and God. The debate between ‘new atheists’ and religious apologists today is often hostile. This book sets a new tone by locating the debate between theism and naturalism (most ‘new atheists’ are self-described ‘naturalists’) in the broader context of reflection on imagination and aesthetics. The eleven chapters are about the power of imagination and the role of aesthetics in deciding between worldviews or philosophies of nature. This book represents a variety of points of view, including the philosophy of religion and of science, art history, and visual art.Less

Turning Images in Philosophy, Science, and Religion : A New Book of Nature

Published in print: 2011-11-01

This book brings together chapters addressing the role of images and imagination recruited in the perennial debates surrounding nature, mind, and God. The debate between ‘new atheists’ and religious apologists today is often hostile. This book sets a new tone by locating the debate between theism and naturalism (most ‘new atheists’ are self-described ‘naturalists’) in the broader context of reflection on imagination and aesthetics. The eleven chapters are about the power of imagination and the role of aesthetics in deciding between worldviews or philosophies of nature. This book represents a variety of points of view, including the philosophy of religion and of science, art history, and visual art.

These chapters in this book were written to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Wilfrid Sellars's essay ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’, a landmark of 20th-century philosophy. Ranging widely ...
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These chapters in this book were written to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Wilfrid Sellars's essay ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’, a landmark of 20th-century philosophy. Ranging widely through Sellars's oeuvre, the chapters are both appreciative and critical of Sellars's accomplishment. Their topics include the standing of empiricism in Sellars's philosophy, Sellars's theory of perception, his dissatisfaction with both foundationalist and coherentist epistemologies, his critique of idealism and commitment to realism, his conception of picturing, and the status of the normative (both the ‘logical space of reasons’ and the ‘manifest image’) in a broadly naturalistic form of scientific realism. These chapters show how vibrant Sellarsian philosophy remains in the 21st century.Less

Published in print: 2009-11-26

These chapters in this book were written to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Wilfrid Sellars's essay ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’, a landmark of 20th-century philosophy. Ranging widely through Sellars's oeuvre, the chapters are both appreciative and critical of Sellars's accomplishment. Their topics include the standing of empiricism in Sellars's philosophy, Sellars's theory of perception, his dissatisfaction with both foundationalist and coherentist epistemologies, his critique of idealism and commitment to realism, his conception of picturing, and the status of the normative (both the ‘logical space of reasons’ and the ‘manifest image’) in a broadly naturalistic form of scientific realism. These chapters show how vibrant Sellarsian philosophy remains in the 21st century.

This work is a narrative study of the interactions between Hume's naturalism and his skepticism as they unfold in the Treatise of Human Nature and the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. More ...
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This work is a narrative study of the interactions between Hume's naturalism and his skepticism as they unfold in the Treatise of Human Nature and the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. More specifically, it examines the way in which the relationship between Hume's naturalism and skepticism shifts dramatically as he delves more deeply into the operations of the human understanding. At first, Hume's skeptical arguments largely play a subservient role of eliminating intellectualist competitors to his naturalistic account of belief formation. This is true, with one minor exception, in the first three parts of book 1 of the Treatise. The situation changes radically in part 4 of book 1, where Hume's investigation of human faculties reveals them to be capricious and unreliable. Hume finds the situation so dire that he comes to question whether anyone, himself included, possesses mental faculties capable of producing a science of human nature. This is Hume's skeptical crisis. The remainder of the book examines Hume's various efforts to extract himself from this difficulty, ending, in the Enquiry, with the claim that a suitable mitigated, or moderate, form of skepticism can arise by bringing radical Pyrrhonian doubts into a proper balance with common instinctive beliefs.Less

Hume's Skeptical Crisis : A Textual Study

Robert J. Fogelin

Published in print: 2009-09-01

This work is a narrative study of the interactions between Hume's naturalism and his skepticism as they unfold in the Treatise of Human Nature and the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. More specifically, it examines the way in which the relationship between Hume's naturalism and skepticism shifts dramatically as he delves more deeply into the operations of the human understanding. At first, Hume's skeptical arguments largely play a subservient role of eliminating intellectualist competitors to his naturalistic account of belief formation. This is true, with one minor exception, in the first three parts of book 1 of the Treatise. The situation changes radically in part 4 of book 1, where Hume's investigation of human faculties reveals them to be capricious and unreliable. Hume finds the situation so dire that he comes to question whether anyone, himself included, possesses mental faculties capable of producing a science of human nature. This is Hume's skeptical crisis. The remainder of the book examines Hume's various efforts to extract himself from this difficulty, ending, in the Enquiry, with the claim that a suitable mitigated, or moderate, form of skepticism can arise by bringing radical Pyrrhonian doubts into a proper balance with common instinctive beliefs.

Kant’s introduction of a distinctive form of philosophical investigation and proof, known as transcendental, inaugurated a new philosophical tradition. This volume reviews the present state and ...
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Kant’s introduction of a distinctive form of philosophical investigation and proof, known as transcendental, inaugurated a new philosophical tradition. This volume reviews the present state and contemporary relevance of this tradition. Its various papers aim to understand the theoretical structures involved in transcendental explanation, and to assess the contemporary relevance of the transcendental orientation, in particular with respect to contemporary philosophical naturalism. These issues are approached from both naturalistic and transcendental perspectives. The volume contains original contributions from Adrian Haddock, Patricia Kitcher, Hilary Kornblith, Penelope Maddy, A. W. Moore, Joel Smith, Robert Stern and Peter Sullivan.The volume originates from the AHRC project Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism, directed by Mark Sacks and hosted by the University of Essex from 2005 to 2008. It is the companion to The History of the Transcendental Turn, a historically themed volume of essays edited by Sebastian Gardner and Matthew Grist.Less

Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism

Published in print: 2011-08-25

Kant’s introduction of a distinctive form of philosophical investigation and proof, known as transcendental, inaugurated a new philosophical tradition. This volume reviews the present state and contemporary relevance of this tradition. Its various papers aim to understand the theoretical structures involved in transcendental explanation, and to assess the contemporary relevance of the transcendental orientation, in particular with respect to contemporary philosophical naturalism. These issues are approached from both naturalistic and transcendental perspectives. The volume contains original contributions from Adrian Haddock, Patricia Kitcher, Hilary Kornblith, Penelope Maddy, A. W. Moore, Joel Smith, Robert Stern and Peter Sullivan.The volume originates from the AHRC project Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism, directed by Mark Sacks and hosted by the University of Essex from 2005 to 2008. It is the companion to The History of the Transcendental Turn, a historically themed volume of essays edited by Sebastian Gardner and Matthew Grist.

The leading arguments against the existence of a priori knowledge are addressed. The opposing arguments fall into three broad categories: conceptual arguments, which offer an analysis of the concept ...
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The leading arguments against the existence of a priori knowledge are addressed. The opposing arguments fall into three broad categories: conceptual arguments, which offer an analysis of the concept of a priori knowledge and allege that no cases of knowledge satisfy the conditions in the analysis; radical empiricist arguments, which offer radical empiricist accounts of knowledge of propositions alleged to be knowable only a priori; and incompatibility arguments, which maintain that a priori knowledge is incompatible with epistemic naturalism. This chapter contends that the negative arguments fail: the conceptual arguments impose implausible conditions on a priori knowledge; the radical empiricist accounts do not establish that the propositions in question are not also known a priori; and the incompatibility arguments fail to show that a priori knowledge is incompatible with either of the two leading forms of epistemic naturalism: philosophical and scientific.Less

The Opposing Arguments

Albert Casullo

Published in print: 2003-04-03

The leading arguments against the existence of a priori knowledge are addressed. The opposing arguments fall into three broad categories: conceptual arguments, which offer an analysis of the concept of a priori knowledge and allege that no cases of knowledge satisfy the conditions in the analysis; radical empiricist arguments, which offer radical empiricist accounts of knowledge of propositions alleged to be knowable only a priori; and incompatibility arguments, which maintain that a priori knowledge is incompatible with epistemic naturalism. This chapter contends that the negative arguments fail: the conceptual arguments impose implausible conditions on a priori knowledge; the radical empiricist accounts do not establish that the propositions in question are not also known a priori; and the incompatibility arguments fail to show that a priori knowledge is incompatible with either of the two leading forms of epistemic naturalism: philosophical and scientific.

Hegel's version of naturalism is drawn from Aristotelian naturalism: Hegel fused Aristotle's conception of nature with his insistence that the origin and development of philosophy has empirical ...
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Hegel's version of naturalism is drawn from Aristotelian naturalism: Hegel fused Aristotle's conception of nature with his insistence that the origin and development of philosophy has empirical physics as its presupposition. As a result, Hegel found that, although modern nature must be understood as a whole to be nonpurposive, there is nonetheless a place for Aristotelian purposiveness within such nature. Such a naturalism provides the framework for explaining how we are both natural organisms and also practically minded (self‐determining, rationally responsive, reason‐giving) beings. In arguing for this point, Hegel shows that the kind of self‐division that is characteristic of human agency also provides human agents with an updated version of an Aristotelian final end of life. In making his case, Hegel argues that both the antinomies of philosophical thought and the essential fragmentation of modern life are all not to be understood as overcome in a higher order unity in the “state.” On the contrary, Hegel demonstrates that modern institutions do not resolve such tensions any more than a comprehensive philosophical account can resolve them theoretically. The job of modern practices and institutions (and at a reflective level the task of modern philosophy) is to help us understand and live with precisely the unresolvability of these oppositions.Less

Hegel's Naturalism : Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life

Terry Pinkard

Published in print: 2012-01-23

Hegel's version of naturalism is drawn from Aristotelian naturalism: Hegel fused Aristotle's conception of nature with his insistence that the origin and development of philosophy has empirical physics as its presupposition. As a result, Hegel found that, although modern nature must be understood as a whole to be nonpurposive, there is nonetheless a place for Aristotelian purposiveness within such nature. Such a naturalism provides the framework for explaining how we are both natural organisms and also practically minded (self‐determining, rationally responsive, reason‐giving) beings. In arguing for this point, Hegel shows that the kind of self‐division that is characteristic of human agency also provides human agents with an updated version of an Aristotelian final end of life. In making his case, Hegel argues that both the antinomies of philosophical thought and the essential fragmentation of modern life are all not to be understood as overcome in a higher order unity in the “state.” On the contrary, Hegel demonstrates that modern institutions do not resolve such tensions any more than a comprehensive philosophical account can resolve them theoretically. The job of modern practices and institutions (and at a reflective level the task of modern philosophy) is to help us understand and live with precisely the unresolvability of these oppositions.